In the past year, almost 3800 children were adopted in Germany.
The vast majority (65 percent) were adopted by stepmothers or stepfathers, as the Federal Statistical Office in Wiesbaden announced on Monday.
Even if there has been a minimal increase recently, the total number of adoptions has been falling significantly for many years - with fluctuations.
According to statistics, more than 6,000 children were adopted in 2000.
One reason for the general decline are also advances in reproductive medicine, it said.
In the past year, almost every second adopted child was under the age of three.
Ten years earlier, only around one in three adoptive children (32 percent) belonged to this age group.
"The background to the development is above all a change in stepfamilies", according to the statistician.
Stepfathers and stepmothers are now adopting infants and toddlers much more frequently than in the past: While only 203 under-3-year-olds were adopted by stepparents in 2010, the number was as high as 933 in 2020.
There was a significant decrease in international adoptions.
The number of children adopted from abroad fell by 75 percent to 116 between 2010 and 2020.